Ichiro deal is for $90 million, but probably is worth $100 million

The Mariners have signed center fielder Ichiro Suzuki to a new five-year contract, cementing news that first broke Tuesday.

Both the club and the player’s agent, Tony Attanasio, said that the $100 million value of the contract was overstating it, and technically, they are right.

The contract calls for Ichiro to receive $90 million. However, three is some deferred money in the deal beyond that. And, unlike the case in most baseball contracts, the deferred money is as a significant rate of interest, probably 4 or 5 percent. Most baseball deferred money is at zero or 1 percent interest.

So when the dollars paid to Ichiro from this contract are finally done, it seems likely that he’ll net about $100 million from this deal.

If you’re interested, he gets a signing bonus of $5 million, then the contract averages $16.5 million a year after that with about $2.5 million thought to be deferred.